Quote:
Originally Posted by drogo
Works expiring into the public domain??  Oh my. Thank you. After all this work I've done today, I needed a good laugh like that. 
I'm sorry, I think you (and other authors) deserve to get paid for you work, but this idea of "an agreement" has long since been shot to heck. You will never see anything enter the public domain. I will never see anything enter the public domain. This "agreement" you speak of is simply theoretical. It's never really going to happen. As was previously stated, copyright is up to life +70 years. Copyright started at 14 yrs, and was renewable once. Unless the laws are repealed (which, let's face it, never happens) nothing will ever move into the public domain again. As each previously established time frame for items to pass into it came due, the time frame was extended. And when life+70 comes along for the first big-name item with attorneys to fight for it, it'll get extended again.
The public domain is dead. Shrinking, really. Snow White is a public domain story, try doing your own movie-version of that and see how it goes. |
I've posted many times that I disagree very strongly with the ever-extending term of copyright. It's gone too far, and needs to be whacked back to something sensible. But that's not necessarily a reason to pitch the entire idea, when it can be fixed with a smaller change (
e.g. terms that actually end within a reasonable period). Of course we can (and probably should) argue about what that reasonable period might be. If you search on my posts, you'll find several discussions of ideas to that end.
Xenophon